Some brave and beautiful women are sharing photos of their bodies after giving birth to their kids. Some raw and inspirational photos of the postpartum belly shared by mother of three Samantha McSwain to show you that there’s absolutely no reason to be ashamed of your body after the miracle of birth.
Women should celebrate having a postpartum belly, with all the scars and stretchmarks. They’re battle ᴡᴏᴜɴᴅs and something to be proud of. It’s a natural side effect of a woman’s abdominal muscles stretching out while the baby is growing inside. Doctors explains that women carrying children also gain weight while pregnant and their bodies produce hormones that make the connective tissue in their stomachs more elastic.
However, some women want to go back to having a flat tummy. And there are some steps they can take to do this. But you should wait a bit before jumping back into your exercise routine.
After giving birth to three children, Samantha McSwain knows that those first few days, weeks, and months postpartum can look different with every baby. When the Honolulu, Hawaii, mom welcomed her first child nearly six years ago, she tells CafeMom, she expected both her body and mental health to be more or less the same as it was before. But boy was she in for a surprise. Now, McSwain offers other moms-to-be a candid glimpse into postpartum life on Instagram — mesh panties and all.
McSwain has never been shy about sharing her journey on social media. Under the handle @lovvesammayy, she regularly posts snapshots from her home life with her following of more than 140,000 fans on Instagram. But one image in particular caught a lot of attention when the mom shared a raw and honest photo taken just hours after giving birth.
In the photos, she stands with a distended belly, still stretched and swollen from the nine months it carried her daughter Korra. There are stretch marks across it, as well as a still visible linea nigra. And yes, she is wearing mesh panties.
“The journey back to my pre-pregnancy weight sure won’t be easy,” she wrote at the time, “but I’m taking it one day at a time. So here I am, day 1 postpartum, in my mesh underwear”
“I still don’t understand how some women can look their best even after delivery,” McSwain continued. “Not me, I just want to eat, sleep, and breasᴛfeed.”
People immediately applauded the mom of three for her honesty. McSwain’s post also seems to help other moms who are sᴛʀᴜɢɢʟɪɴɢ postpartum. McSwain admits that social media plays a big role in why women place pressure on themselves to “bounce back.”
After all, when most of us scroll through Instagram, we’re hit in the face with overly filtered photos designed to hide every natural “flaw” you can think of. But moms who have just given birth need realness. They need stretch marks and puffy bellies and mesh panties and tired eyes. What they don’t need is more nonsense about “bouncing back.”
